DramaFever Unveils Its Second Korean Co-Production

The streaming service will premiere drama ‘Tomorrow’s Cantabile’ on Oct. 13

A year after DramaFever waded into co-production with the smash hit Korean drama Heirs, the streaming service has revealed its second such venture, the highly anticipated drama Tomorrow’s Cantabile.

The New York-based company will premiere the series on Oct. 13, the same day it debuts on television in South Korea. Episodes will be exclusively available to North and South America – and subtitled in English, Spanish and Portuguese – on DramaFever within 24 hours of their airing on the Korean network KBS2. The entire subtitled series will later be available on Hulu, which has a syndication partnership with DramaFever.

DramaFever, which celebrated its fifth anniversary in New York City last night, serves as a sort of niche Netflix, offering subtitled foreign-language film and television content for American audiences. The company currently draws a viewership of 20 million to its 700 titles through licensing deals with 70 broadcasters and production companies in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

“We’ve gone from being strictly a distribution platform to becoming a company that has gotten to know the audience well enough to make investments in co-production and bring titles to the U.S. market on an exclusive basis,” DramaFever cofounder and co-CEO Suk Park tells The Hollywood Reporter.

DramaFever’s first co-production, the Gossip Girl-esque Heirs, attracted two billion views worldwide. The drama’s first three episodes were set in Los Angeles, and DramaFever assisted Korean shingle Hwa & Dam Pictures with location scouting as well as hiring and housing crew members locally. When Hwa & Dam asked for help identifying a sponsor for the production’s mounting budget, DramaFever brought in a surprising savior: the Almond Board of California (South Korea is a major importer of California almonds). Through the Almond Board’s brand integration partnership with DramaFever, almonds will be incorporated into 15 episodes of Tomorrow’s Cantabile, a classical music-set romance based on the popular Japanese manga Nodame Cantabile. Good Doctor’s Joo Won and Miss Granny’s Shim Eun-Kyung star. (Watch a preview below.)

On Wednesday, Re/code reported that DramaFever, which has raised $12 million from investors that include AMC Networks, Bertelsmann, MK Capital, SoftBank, NALA and YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, is on the market and in talks with IAC for an acquisition anywhere between $80 million and $140 million. DramaFever declined to comment.